Week 8: semantic and lexical change
[form] = ‘meaning’; FUNCTION
different [form] → sound change
different ‘meaning’ → semantic change
Semantic change: a word’s meaning changes independently of its form
Evidence for semantic change:
Comparison of cognates in related languages
e.g. deer-Tier, timber-zimmer, tide-zeit, starve-sterben
Written records
1 Kinds of change:
Broadening: word’s conceptual space grows
dog, bird, pilot salary (Lat. salārium) ‘payment’ ← ‘salt allotment’ armoire ‘wardrobe ← ‘armory’ cupboard Sp. caballero ‘gentleman’ ← ‘horse rider’ Sp. pájaro ‘bird’ ← passer ‘sparrow’ estar ‘to be’ stare ‘to stand’
Narrowing: word’s conceptual space shrinks
hound, meat, flesh, wife, deer (cf G Tier ‘animal’) girl ← ‘child’ OE fugol ‘bird’ → fowl (cf G Vogel ‘bird’) OE steorban ‘die’ → starve (cf G sterben ‘die’) Fr soldat ‘paid person’ → ‘soldier’ Fr drapeau ‘piece of cloth fastened to staff’ → ‘flag’ Sp rezar ‘pray’ ← ‘to recite, say aloud’
Bifurcation: word acquires second meaning, possibly related to first
pitch ‘tar’ as in pitch black → ‘very’
Shift: old meaning is lost, replaced by a new meaning
Finnish raha ‘pelt’ → ‘money’ silly ← ‘blessed’
2 Processes in bifurcation & shift metaphor: experiencing or framing one thing in terms of another
insult: ‘insult’ ← ‘jump on’ bead ← bede ‘prayer’ (compare G Gebet) Fr. feiulle, Sp. hoja ‘page’ ← Lat. folia ‘leaves’
dispose of, do someone in, liquidate, terminate, take care of, eliminate
blasted, blitzed, bombed, hammered, obliterated, ripped, shredded, smashed, tattered, wasted; pissed, sauced, sloshed, soaked
Eng root ‘of plant’ → ‘of plant/word/algebra’ Eng stud ‘attractive man’ from ‘male horse used for breeding’ Sp sierra ‘saw’ → ‘mountain range’ Sp pierna ‘leg’ ← Lat perna ‘ham’ Fr entendre ‘to hear’ ← ‘understand (cf Sp entender ‘understand’) Fr fermer ‘close’; Sp firmar ‘to sign’ from ‘to fix, make firm, make fast’ Fr chapeau ‘hat’ from ‘bonnet’ metonymy: a word develops a second (non-metaphorical) sense related to the first
tea ‘afternoon meal’ ← ‘(brewed) tea’ ceace ‘jaw’ → cheek Sp cadera ‘hips’ ← ‘butt’ ← Lat. cathedra ‘chair’ Sp mejilla ‘cheek’ from Lat maxilla ‘jaw’ Sp plata ‘silver’ → ‘money’ Sp acera ‘sidewalk’ from facera ‘façade of buidlings’ Fr jument ‘mare’ from ‘pack horse’ Fr sevrer ‘to wean’ from Lat ‘separare’ (cf sever)
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Sp., Fr. timbre: ‘drum’ → ‘bell’ → ‘helmet shaped’ → ‘(heraldic) crest’ → ‘(wax) stamp’ → ‘postage stamp’
Synecdoche: a part is used to refer to a whole
Parts of phrases (displacement: phrasal synecdoche)
success ← succes favorable luck ← good luck contacts ← contact lenses capital ← capital city hand ← hired hand private ← private soldier tribal ← tribal council daily ← daily paper Fr journal ← papier journal Sp hermano ← frater germanus ‘brother of the same parent’ foie, higado ← Lat. iecurficatum ‘fig-stuffed liver’ Finnish yska ‘cough’ ← yska tauti ‘breast/lap sickness’
Parts of referent:
head ‘unit of cattle’ Sp. boda ‘wedding’ ← Lat. vota ‘vows’ G. Bein ‘leg’ ← ‘bone’
tongue for language, moon for month, sun for day
4 Degeneration / pejoration
knave ← cnafa ‘child’ (cf G Knaba) → ‘servant’ spinster, madam, mistress putta/puta ‘whore’ ← ‘girl’ ramera ‘prostitute’ → ‘innkeeper’s wife’ churl ← ceorl ‘man without rank’ → ‘peasant’ → ‘rude’ villain ← Fr. villein ‘farm worker’ → ‘rustic, ignorant’ → ‘bad guy’ silly ← selig ‘happy’ ← sælig ‘blessed’ disease ‘illness’ ← ‘discomfort’
Elevation / amelioration
fond ← fonnen ‘to be foolish’ pretty ← prættig ‘crafty, sly’ knight ← cniht ‘boy, servant’ → ‘servant of royalty’ (cf G Knecht ‘servant’) calle ‘street’ ← ‘cattle path’ casa ‘house’ ← ‘hut’ Sp. villa ‘country house’; Fr. ville ‘city’ ← villa ‘farm’ court, corte from cohort ‘farmyard, enclosure’ → ‘army division’ ‘imperial guard’ ‘palace’ dude
Euphemism: new word to replace taboo word
bear, behr, bruin, medved, oso, ourson
huevo ‘egg’ → ‘testicle’; thus blanquillo pajaro ‘bird’ → ‘penis’; thus pajarito ‘bird’ Kiche Mayan: ts’ikin ‘bird’ → ‘penis’; thus cikop ‘small animal’ → ‘bird’
5 Hyperbole: loss of strength of meaning
terribly, awfully, horribly, lame awesome, fantastic G sehr ‘very’ ← ‘sorely’ Fr. extonare ‘strike thunder’ → etonner ‘surprise’
Litotes (understatement)
kill ← ‘strike, hit’ bereft ← ‘robbed’ poison ← ‘potion, draught’ Fr. meurtre ‘murder’ ← ‘bruise’
6 Possible causes of / reasons for semantic change
• Certain kinds of changes are typical • Other kinds are motivated • Polysemy is a necessary stage
Semantic plausibility:
see → know, understand hear → understand, obey physical action → mental state
hold → understand grasp, get a hold of, get pensar ‘weigh’ → ‘think’ feel → ‘have pity for’ touch → taste ‘sharp, crisp, bitter’ taste → emotion ‘bitter, sour, sweet’ obligation → probability animal names → inanimate objects concrete → abstract
7 Motivated change interference & taboo avoidance cock/rooster, ass/donkey pajaro/pajarito invention, technological advancement pilot, write sociological change knight cultural contact & conceptual borrowing Paamese aman ‘bird’ → ‘airplane’ Fijian wagavuka ‘airplane’ ← waga ‘canoe’ + vuka ‘fly’ Woleaian waayal ‘airplane’ ← waa ‘canoe’ + yal ‘fly’
Kosraean ʃik ‘tatoo’ → ‘write’
Kiche kjeːx ‘deer’ → ‘horse’
Miwok koːno ‘bow’ → ‘gun’
Polysemy: same form, several meanings
A necessary stage in semantic change (core, periphery trade places)
timber, zimmer
tim-ram ‘building’ (domus, ‘house’) → ‘building, material for building’ in English; then just ‘material’ → ‘building, room of building’ in German, then just ‘room’
write: ‘scratch, score’ → ‘inscribed writing’ → ‘writing’
penne ‘feather’ → ‘pen’
8 Lexical change (note the different usage of the word etymology)
copying/borrowing/loaning words source language, target language
fitting the sound pattern of receiving language
Tongan aisikilimi Hawaiian kalikimaki Japanese besuboru, herikoputa, suketu borudu
Cantonese ʧi si si te ka
Motu botolo Maori hikareta Tongan motuka
Paamese tagio, veːva Wallis, Futuna lalene
cultural rather than core vocabulary
‘cry, walk, sleep, eat, water, stone, sky, wind, father, die’ vs ‘frost, snow, taro, kava, earthquake, muezzin, hajj, prophet, trinity, book, smoke, cigarette, beer, car, airplane, …’
filling gaps
migration (thus new natural phenomena), technological innovation, sociological change
9 replacement of existing words possibly because of cultural value/esteem of source language doublets
Eng. paternal, pedal vs fatherly, foot kind, kind, gender, genre
Rotuman foʔa ‘come ashore’ vs toka ‘settle’
Borrowings and detection of them
borrowing language may construe a complex word as a single morpheme
vinegar, aardvark alligator ← Sp. el lagarto
Sp. ← Arabic
alcoba ‘alcove’ ← al qobbah ‘the vault’ alcalde ‘mayor’ ← al qadɁī ‘the judge’
algodon ‘cotton’ ← al qutɁn ‘the cotton’
Finnish tytär ‘daughter’: no cognates in F-U; many in I-E
Sp. ganso ‘goose’: G. Gans, Eng. goose Lat anser, It oca, Fr oie
10 New words from scratch: paraffin, gas, blurb from people: sandwich, volt, guillotine
from places:
currant ← Corinth denim ← Nimes jeans ← genoa sherry ← jerez
Folk etymology: word (mis)analyzed as (a) complex and (b) having some meaningful component
chou croute crayfish
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